Nor All Your Tears (16 page)

Like Rolf Harris, she appeared to have mastered the art of breathing in and out and vocalizing all at the same time; certainly I didn't notice any pauses in her monologue. We were standing in a small hallway, off which two doors led; the one through which she had come showed a living room that was crowded and untidy, the wallpaper sporting a garish orange pattern that fought ferociously with the deep red of the carpet; only the eye of the beholder was the loser. She continued, ‘So I fetched me key . . . I wouldn't normally go in, of course . . . I mean, I may be the landlady and he may be only a tenant, but he's entitled to some privacy . . . anyway, I went up and found him on the floor . . . he was twitching . . .' At last she paused but, before I could speak, she carried on in a stage whisper, ‘I think he
wet
hisself . . .'

The irony of this remark did not strike her, although I had to try mightily not to point it out to her. Indicating the other door, I asked, ‘Is he upstairs?'

‘Oh, yes,' she said and delved deeply in her pocket for the key. Whilst she did so, she said over her shoulder in a wounded tone, ‘He was very rude, you know. He told me to go away, only he didn't use those words, if you know what I mean . . .'

‘Does he know you've called me?'

‘No.'

Which meant that he might well tell me to take a walk, in which case, I would have to wish him ‘sayonara' and be about my overly fatigued business. Oh well . . .

I began to trudge wearily up the stairway that the opened door had revealed, but was a bit disconcerted to discover I was still not alone. I paused and turned, smiled and suggested firmly, but I hope not impolitely, that she should stay downstairs. Her look of disgruntlement might have been hard to take had I not been so tired and had the thought of fresh air not been so enticing, but she complied. At the top of the stairs was another door, upon which I knocked.

‘What is it?'

‘It's the doctor, Mr Stewart.' Saying the name out loud made me realize that it was familiar, although I could not place it.

‘Go away.'

‘Your landlady called me, Mr Stewart. She's worried about you.'

‘Sod off.'

‘She said you collapsed. Perhaps I should check you over.'

There was a pause, then the door was suddenly wrenched open, something that made me jump so that I almost took a tumble backwards down the stairs. The man in front was dishevelled, clearly very distressed, angry and probably drunk; I finally recognized the name as that of the man who had so recently been in my surgery. He had his mouth open, presumably to exhort me once more to depart the scene in rich and ringing Anglo-Saxon, but on seeing me, he paused. A look came over his face, one of recognition true, but one in which there was something more; it was something I couldn't place. ‘Oh, it's you.'

‘May I come in?' I asked, eager to do my Hippocratic duty.

A pause, then he stood aside, but said nothing.

It was tidy. That was the first and overwhelming impression. It was basic, much of it looked second-hand, and some of it looked broken, but there was a dignity about that room. This was a man who had little but, most importantly, amongst it was order. A bed, a small bedside table, two chairs and a bookcase; I could see a bedroom through a doorway, a kitchen in another; the carpet was thin and focally worn, but clean. The only thing in that room that wasn't neat was the bed; he went and sat on the edge of it, gesturing that I should sit in one of the chairs. ‘I told you. I'm epileptic. I had a fit. Nothing serious.'

Saying that having an epileptic fit wasn't serious was a bit like saying that it was only an amputation. I said, ‘Maybe not this time . . .'

He considered this. ‘I did a couple of stints in Ulster.'

That was all he said, but it was all he had to say, especially using the tone that he did. To him, an epileptic fit was nothing and I was a naive fool if I thought otherwise. I looked around for something to say, found nothing. Then my eye caught the empty dog's bed in the corner. ‘Are you going to get another dog?'

He stared at me with an intensity that was quite striking, if not frightening. Slowly and in a voice that was calm, and yet all the more chilling for that, he replied, ‘I haven't decided yet.'

‘It was probably the stress of his death that precipitated the fit,' I suggested.

‘I expect.'

There was then a silence between us. It wasn't a comfortable silence and inevitably one of us felt compelled to say something; just for once, this time it wasn't me. He suddenly said, ‘I've done some terrible things in my life, Doctor.'

It was a long way into a day that was rapidly becoming everlasting, at least in my mind, and the last thing I wanted was an in-depth therapy session with a man who had clearly seen and done things that would probably give me sweat-drenched nightmares for a year; a man, moreover, who was undoubtedly trained in various ingenious methods of separating people from their lives, and who had a physique that was ten times better than anything
I'd
ever seen in a mirror. However, he was also a man who was clearly in some sort of torment and, for better or worse, I had once made the colossal, stupid mistake of applying to medical school.

‘You were a soldier, Mr Stewart; it goes with the job. We – the rest of us – expect you to do it, because if you didn't, there wouldn't be anyone else to.'

I know he heard because he replied, but there was no change in his lost, distracted expression, no flicker of the eyes away from the grimy carpet. ‘I know that. It doesn't make it any easier for me, though.'

I suddenly discovered that my counselling skills were a tad limited; all I could find to say was, ‘No, I don't suppose it does.'

He suddenly breathed out as if he had been holding it in for hours in some sort of personal dare; I thought for a second that he had relaxed, and that I was a natural counsellor all along, but his next words disabused me. ‘So that's my tough shit, then.'

‘There are types of therapy you could try . . .'

His face told me what he thought of that, but just to make sure I got the message, he said, ‘I don't think so.'

Somewhat awkwardly, I countered with, ‘Yes, well, if you haven't seen a neurologist recently, it might be an idea to get checked up. Have you ever tried Tegretol?'

‘It gave me the shits.'

‘Ah, well, it can do that. But there are new things coming along all the time . . .'

‘No, thanks.'

It was a polite refusal but a most definite one. ‘Fair enough. Has the Mogadon helped you sleep?'

‘No.'

‘Oh . . . OK . . . Perhaps we could try something else?'

Until then he had been hunched, head down, but now he suddenly jerked his head up to stare at me, and his whole body became tense. ‘Perhaps there are some things that drugs can't fix.'

I found myself nodding enthusiastically purely out of instinctual self-defence. ‘Absolutely.'

It was obvious that I wasn't going to do any more good here and I had a man in Fairlands Avenue with breathing difficulties to see. I stood up. ‘I'll be on my way, then.'

His head was back down and his posture was once again one of despair. He was mourning. Perhaps it was for his dog, perhaps it was for a life lost but still too-well remembered. He did not respond. I made my way to the door. On the bookcase to the left was a single black-and-white photograph of a group of schoolchildren, perhaps in their mid-teens. It was some sort of end-of-term class photo; they were all dressed, more or less smartly, in white shirts or blouses, dark skirts or trousers and striped ties. They were standing outside what was clearly the main building of Bensham Manor School. I wondered what connection it had with this strange, sad, angry man, but didn't dare ask.

TWENTY-THREE

A
nd so, dear reader, to bed. I am unaware to this day of the exact time, but would suppose it to be around eight forty-five or so in the morning. My last patient had spent most of the night being sick; it was associated with central abdominal pain that had moved to the right lower quadrant, and she had been febrile with a coated tongue. Thus it was that I confidently diagnosed acute appendicitis and had waited with her – she was only twenty and had newly moved into the area, knowing no one – until the ambulance had arrived. During that time we had chatted and she had told me that her mother had just been diagnosed with pre-senile dementia and she had moved to be close to her. She had struck me as a nice girl, and I treasure meeting nice people because there are so few about.

It was the kind of sleep that only the truly, wretchedly, incontestably exhausted can ever know; it doesn't so much knit the ravelled sleeve of care as darn it badly, so that you awake not refreshed, just ordinarily tired. Only problem was that halfway through – so that the darning this time was even more than usually threadbare and not destined to last long – a knocking came upon the front door. ‘Knocking' is a euphemism; it would be described more accurately as ‘thumping', or perhaps ‘battering'; maybe even ‘hammering'. More door abuse was committed before I made my bleary, semi-comatose way out of my bed, into the bathroom (by mistake), down the stairs and thence to my poor front door. This I opened.

My gaze fell upon a man who was the epitome of disgruntlement. Such was my state that I failed immediately to recognize him, an omission that this man – six feet or so in height, broad across the shoulders, getting broad about the beam – seemed to take amiss. I say ‘seemed' because at that moment, the whole of reality ‘seemed', if you get what I mean.

‘I think we should talk,' was his opening sally in lieu of the usual niceties.

‘Do you?'

Now, you read those two words and maybe you will appreciate that I was extremely dozy, but they could be conceivably be misinterpreted; should you be so inclined, you might think that the tone was facetious, perhaps even in gladiatorial. Whatever
you
think, my visitor certainly formed his own opinion, and did so quickly. He grabbed the lapels of my light cotton dressing gown and brought us face to face; his breath smelled of beer but God only knows what mine smelt of. ‘You what?'

It took a couple of seconds for my lenses to contract to the right spherical diameter but, when they did, cogs meshed, synapses were triggered, bio-electric relays did their things . . .

Mr Michael Clarke occupied approximately eighty per cent of my visual field. To judge by the amount of perspiration he was excreting, he was hot, but then the morning was already warm. ‘Don't be funny,' he advised.

‘Mr Clarke,' I said. For want of anything else to add and, given that I was somewhat befuddled, I continued, ‘Come in.'

And in he came.

To cut a long story off at the knees, he had a problem with the forthcoming matrimonials 'twixt my pater and his mater. This he made clear immediately, having pushed past me and sort of planted himself in my kitchen. ‘What the bloody hell is going on?' he enquired; he had a richly South London twang.

Given that he had barged into my house and was acting in an unmistakeably hostile manner, I thought this a bit rich, but forbore to point this out and thus had to extemporize. ‘Well . . .'

Not brilliant, I admit, but I felt somewhat inhibited, what with being in my jim-jams and all. I was spared yet more embarrassment by his desire to do the talking. ‘Your father's well out of order.'

I've been of the opinion that Dad was well out of order for a long time, but the men in white coats had yet to cotton on. The clouds of ambiguation were clearing, though, which was perhaps good for my well being, since I was getting the impression he was short on patience. I ventured, ‘Mr Clarke . . .' dimly aware that I was in danger of becoming rather repetitive.

He brought his finger into action, using it with vigour to underline his points. ‘One, my mother is not available.' He poked me hard about halfway between the sternal notch and the xiphisternum. ‘Two, even if she was, I wouldn't want her having anything to do with some chancer like your father.' Another poke. ‘Three, I'm holding you personally responsible for this situation.' I tried again; if there's one thing that being a doctor teaches you, it's patience, although his choice of designation for my father was distinctly trying. In addition, you must bear in mind that I was tired and, in my opinion, Mr Clarke was a bit of a wanker (although I didn't use that phraseology out loud). Therefore, instead of being anodyne, I reacted and did so loudly. ‘What situation?' I was rewarded with a frown and a pause in the ranting, so I did what Wellington would have done and pressed home this small advantage. ‘In the first place, I am not responsible for my father and what he does. In the second, even if I were, I would applaud what he's doing. In the third, you should be delighted to have him as a stepfather.'

I was quite pleased with this riposte, right up until the moment he produced a blow to my epigastrium followed by a well-aimed upper cut to my jaw, and I discovered that the art of debate (at least in South London) had died with the ancient Greeks.

What's supposed to happen is that darkness gradually gives way to blurred light, shapes and colours emerge from blackness, while sounds come to you from a long way off, approaching slowly, and becoming less reverberant, more meaningful. Ideally, the shape of a face should fill your vision, a loved one talking in concerned tones as consciousness returns and you slowly recall what has happened to you.

That's what is supposed to happen. What actually happened was I came to all alone, starring up at a cobweb in the corner of the ceiling; the only other entity in the vicinity was the spider – one of those incredibly long-legged ones that must have trouble when the soles of its feet get itchy – in the midst of the aforementioned web. My jaw hurt but then so did my whole head, and my stomach wasn't going to be easily outdone in the pain stakes, either. I rolled over and got slowly and agonizingly to my hands and knees. I felt sick, but I feared that if I did start vomiting it would hurt big time; luckily a few deep breaths seemed to help. After five minutes I was able to get to one of the kitchen chairs and sat on it heavily. The ring of the doorbell was not well timed. Was it Michael Clarke back for a bit more sparring? I was in two minds whether to answer it but decided it was unlikely to be my nemesis again and made my giddy way up the hall. It was my father.